by Ben Mezrich
From the back of the vast room, Eduardo watched the professor hop about behind the lectern, catching an odd word or phrase from the echoing sound system up above. From what he could tell, this particular Core class had something to do with history or philosophy; on closer inspection, the map behind the prof looked to be Europe sometime in the past three hundred years—but that didn’t really clear things up. Eduardo doubted the class had anything to do with the Yanomamö, but at Harvard, you couldn’t be sure.
This particular morning, he wasn’t there to get himself a little more “well rounded.” He was on a mission of a very different nature.
He scanned the room, using one hand to shield his eyes from the immense spots on the stage, which seemed to be aimed in exactly the wrong direction for what they’d been designed to do. His other hand was occupied; cradled beneath his left arm was a bulky crate, covered by a large blue towel. The crate was heavy, and Eduardo was very careful not to jostle the damn thing as he searched the rows of students for his quarry.
It took him a few minutes to locate Mark, sitting by himself three rows from the very back of the room. Mark had his sandaled feet up on the seat in front of him, which was empty, and a notebook spread open on his lap. He didn’t seem to be taking any notes. In fact, he didn’t seem to be awake at all; his eyes were closed, his head mostly covered by the oversize hood of the fleece he almost always wore, and his hands were jammed deep into the pockets of his jeans.
Eduardo grinned to himself; in a matter of a few short weeks, he and Mark had become close friends. Even though they lived in different houses and had different majors, Eduardo felt that they had a similar spirit—and he’d begun to notice an almost strange feeling that they were supposed to be friends, even before they were. In that short time, he’d grown to really like Mark, had begun to think of him like a real brother, not just someone who shared a Jewish frat, and he was pretty sure Mark felt the same way about him.
Still grinning, Eduardo quietly worked his way down the aisle to Mark’s row. He stepped over the extended legs of a sleeping junior whom he barely recognized from one of his economics seminars, then pushed past a pair of sophomore girls who were both busy listening to an MP3 player stashed in the bag between them. Then he plopped down in the empty seat next to Mark, carefully placing the covered crate on the floor in front of his knees.
Mark opened his eyes, saw Eduardo sitting next to him—and then slowly turned his attention to the crate on the floor.
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” Eduardo replied.
“That’s not—”
“Yes, it is.”
Mark whistled low, then leaned forward and lifted a corner of the blanket.
Instantaneously, the live chicken inside the corrugated milk crate started squawking at full volume. Feathers flew out of the crate, pluming upward, then raining down around Eduardo and Mark and anyone else within a five-yard radius. Kids in the rows in front of and behind where they were sitting gaped at them. Within a second, everyone in their part of the lecture hall was staring at them, a mixture of shock and amusement on their faces.
Eduardo’s cheeks turned bright red and he quickly grabbed the towel and yanked it closed over the crate. Slowly, the bird quieted down. Eduardo glanced down to the stage—but the professor was still rambling on about Britons and Vikings and whoever the hell else ran around in that time period. Because of the overwhelming sound system, he hadn’t noticed the commotion—thank God.
“That’s great,” Mark commented, grinning at the crate. “I really like your new friend. He’s a much better conversationalist than you are.”
“It’s not great!” Eduardo hissed, ignoring Mark’s jab. “This chicken is a pain in the ass. And it’s caused me a whole shitload of trouble.”
Mark just kept on grinning. To be fair, the situation was actually quite comical, when you looked at it from the outside. The chicken was part of Eduardo’s Phoenix initiation; he had been instructed to keep it with him at all times, to carry it with him everywhere, day and night, to every class, dining hall, and dorm room he visited. Hell, he had to sleep with the damn thing. For five whole days, his only job had been to keep that chicken alive.
And for the first few days, everything had gone swimmingly. The chicken had seemed happy, and none of his teachers had been the wiser. He’d avoided most of his smaller seminars, feigning the flu. The dining halls and the dorm rooms had been easy; most of the other students on campus knew about the Final Club initiations, so nobody gave him much of a hard time. And what few authority figures he ran across in his daily routine were willing to turn a blind eye. Getting into a Final Club was a big deal, and everybody knew it.
But in the last two days of his initiation, things had gotten more complicated.
It had all gone downhill forty-eight hours earlier, when Eduardo had brought the chicken back to his dorm room in Eliot House after a long day of dodging classes. It had turned out that down the hall from Eduardo’s room lived two kids who were members of the Porcellian Club; Eduardo had met them a few times, but since they traveled in such different circles, they’d never really gotten to know one another. Eduardo hadn’t thought anything of it when the two kids saw him with the chicken. Nor did he bother hiding the fact that for dinner, he’d decided to feed the chicken some fried chicken he’d smuggled home from the dining hall.
It wasn’t until twenty-four hours later, when the Harvard Crimson published an explosive exposé, that Eduardo had realized what had happened. That evening, after witnessing Eduardo feeding chicken to the chicken, the Porc kids had written an anonymous e-mail to an animal rights group called the United Poultry Concern. The e-mail, signed by someone calling herself “Jennifer”—the e-mail address read [email protected]—accused the Phoenix of ordering its new members to torture and kill live chickens as part of its initiation. The United Poultry Concern had immediately contacted the Harvard administration, reaching as high up as President Larry Summers himself. An ad-board investigation was already under way—and the Phoenix was going to have to defend itself against accusations of animal cruelty—including forcing cannibalism on defenseless poultry.
All in all, Eduardo had to admit that it was a pretty good prank by the Porc kids—but it was a huge headache for the Phoenix. Thankfully, the Phoenix leadership hadn’t traced the fiasco back to Eduardo yet—though even if they did, they’d hopefully see the humor in the situation.
Of course, Eduardo hadn’t been ordered to torture and kill his chicken. Exactly the opposite, he’d been ordered to keep his chicken healthy and alive. Maybe feeding the chicken chicken was a mistake; how was he supposed to know what chickens ate? The thing hadn’t come with a manual. Eduardo had gone to a Jewish prep school in Miami. What the hell did Jews know about chickens, other than the fact that they made pretty good soup?
The entire debacle had almost overshadowed the fact that Eduardo was nearly finished with his initiation period. In a few more days, he was going to be a full-fledged member of the Phoenix. If the chicken fiasco didn’t end up getting him kicked out, pretty soon he’d be hanging out in the club every weekend, and his social life was going to change dramatically. Already, those changes had begun to take effect.
He leaned toward Mark, keeping his hands on the covered crate, trying to soothe the still-anxious bird into a few more minutes of silence.
“I’ve got to get out of here before this thing erupts again,” he whispered. “But I just wanted to make sure we’re still on for tonight.”
Mark raised his eyebrows, and Eduardo nodded, smiling. The night before, he’d met a girl at a Phoenix cocktail hour. Her name was Angie, she was cute and slim and Asian, and she had a friend. Eduardo had convinced her to bring the friend along, and now the four of them were going to meet up for a drink at Grafton Street Grille. A month ago, such a thing would have been almost unthinkable.
“What’s her name again?” Mark asked. “The friend, I mean?”
“Monica.”
The truth was, Eduardo had no idea if Monica was hot or not. He’d never seen the girl. But in his mind, neither one of them had the right to be so choosy. Up until now, the ladies hadn’t exactly been knocking down the doors to get to them. Now that Eduardo was almost in the Phoenix, he was starting to have access to women—and he was determined to bring his friend along with him. He couldn’t yet get Mark into the Phoenix himself—but he could certainly introduce him to a girl or two.
Mark shrugged, and Eduardo gently lifted the crate and rose to his feet. As he started down the row toward the aisle, he cast a quick glance back at Mark’s outfit—the customary Adidas flip-flops, jeans, and the fleece hoody Then Eduardo straightened his own tie, brushed chicken feathers off the lapels of his dark blue blazer. The tie and blazer were almost a uniform for him; on days he had meetings for the Investment Association, he even wore a suit.
“Just be there at eight,” he called back to Mark as he exited the row. “And, Mark …”
“Yeah?”
“Try and wear something nice, for a change.”
Behind every great fortune, there lies a great crime.
If Balzac had somehow risen from the dead to witness Mark Zuckerberg storm into his Kirkland dorm room that monumental evening during the last week of October 2003, he might have amended his famous words; because that historical moment, one that inarguably led to one of the greatest fortunes in modern history, did not begin with a crime so much as a college prank.
If the newly revived Balzac had been there in that spartan, claustrophobic dorm, he might have seen Mark head straight for his computer; there would have been no question that the kid was angry, and that he had with him a number of Beck’s beers. As usual, he was probably wearing his Adidas flip-flops and a hoody sweatshirt. It was well known that he pretty much hated any shoes that weren’t flip-flops, and one day he was determined to be in a position where those were the only shoes he’d ever have to wear.
Maybe Mark took a deep swig of the beer, let the bitter taste bite at the back of his throat, as he tapped his fingers against the laptop keyboard, gently summoning the thing awake.
Since high school, it could be observed, his thoughts had always seemed clearer when he let them come out through his hands. To an outside observer, the relationship he had with his computer seemed much smoother than any relationship he’d ever had with anyone in the outside world. He never seemed happier than when he was looking through his own reflection into that glassy screen. Maybe, deep down, it had something to do with control; with the computer, Mark was always in control. Or maybe it was more than that, an almost symbiosis that had grown out of years and years of practice. The way Mark’s fingers touched those keys: this was where he belonged. Sometimes, it probably felt like this was the only place he belonged.
That evening, at a little after eight P.M., he stared into the brightly lit screen, his fingers finding the right keys, opening up a fresh blog page—something that had most likely been percolating in the back of his mind for a few days. The frustration—likely the result of the evening he had just had—was, it seemed, the final impetus to move further along with the idea, turn the kernel into corn. He started with a title:
Harvard Face Mash/The Process.
He might have looked at the words for a few minutes, wondering if he was really going to go through with this. He might have taken another drink from his beer, and hunched forward over the keys:
8:13 pm: ***** is a bitch. I need to think of something to make to take my mind off her. I need to think of something to occupy my mind. Easy enough now I just need an idea.
Maybe somewhere inside of Mark’s thoughts, he knew that blaming it all on a girl who had rejected him wasn’t exactly fair. How were this one girl’s actions different from the way most girls had treated Mark throughout high school and college? Even Eduardo, geek that he was, had better luck with girls than Mark Zuckerberg did. And now that Eduardo was getting into the Phoenix—well, tonight Mark was going to do something about his situation. He was going to create something that would give him back some of that control, show all of them what he could do.
Perhaps he took another drink, then turned his attention toward the desktop computer next to his laptop. He hit a few keys, and the desktop’s screen whirred to life. He quickly opened up his Internet connection, linking himself to the school’s network. A few more clicks of the keys, and he was ready.
He turned back to the laptop, and went back to work on the blog:
9:48 pm: I’m a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if it’s not even 10pm and it’s a Tuesday night? What? The Kirkland facebook is open on my computer desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendous facebook pics.
Maybe he grinned as he scanned through the pictures that were now spread across the screen of his desktop. Certainly, he recognized some of the guys, and even a few of the girls—but most of them were probably strangers to him, even though he’d passed them in the dining hall or on his way to his classes. He was probably a complete stranger to them, too; some of the girls, for sure, had gone out of their way to ignore him.
I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.
At some point during this process, Mark began to exchange ideas with his friends who had gotten home from dinner, classes, drinks—most of the communication coming, as it usually did, via e-mail. Nobody in his circle used the phone much anymore; it was all e-mail. Other than Eduardo, they were all almost as infatuated with their computers as Mark was. He turned back to the blog:
It’s not such a great idea and probably not even funny, but Billy comes up with the idea of comparing two people from the facebook, and only sometimes putting a farm animal in there. Good call Mr. Olson! I think he’s onto something.
Yes, to a kid like Mark it must have indeed seemed a great idea. The Kirkland housing facebook—all of the school’s facebooks, as their databases of student photos were known—was such a stagnant thing, compiled entirely in alphabetical order by the university.
The percolations that must have gripped Mark’s imagination for a few days were now forming into something real—an idea for a Web site. To Mark, it’s likely that the cool thing was the math that was going to go into it—the computer science of the task, the code at the heart of the Web-site idea. It wasn’t just a matter of writing a program, it was also creating the correct algorithm. There was some complexity to it that his friends would surely appreciate—even if the larger campus of bimbos and Neanderthals never understood.
11:09 pm: Yea, it’s on. I’m not exactly sure how the farm animals are going to fit into this whole thing (you can’t really ever be sure with farm animals …), but I like the idea of comparing two people together. It gives the whole thing a very Turing feel, since people’s ratings of the pictures will be more implicit than, say, choosing a number to represent each person’s hotness like they do on hotornot.com. The other thing we’re going to need is a lot of pictures. Unfortunately, Harvard doesn’t keep a public centralized facebook so I’m going to have to get all the images from the individual houses that people are in. And that means no freshman pictures … drats.
Maybe, at this point, he knew that he was about to cross a line—but then, he’d never been very good at staying within the lines. That was Eduardo’s game, wearing a jacket and tie, joining that Final Club, playing along with everyone else in the sandbox. From Mark’s history, it was obvious that he didn’t like the sandbox. He seemed the type who wanted to kick out all the sand.
12:58 am: Let the hacking begin. First on the list is Kirkland. They keep everything open and allow indexes in their Apache configuration, so a little wget magic is all that’s necessary to download the entire Kirkland facebook. Child’s play.
It really was that simple—for Mark. Most likely, in a matter of minutes, he had all the pictures from the Kirkland facebook downloaded off of the university
’s servers and into his laptop. Sure, in a sense it was stealing—he didn’t have the legal rights to those pictures, and the university certainly didn’t put them up there for someone to download them. But then, if information was getable, didn’t Mark have the right to get it? What sort of evil authority could decide that he wasn’t allowed access to something he so easily could access?
1:03 am: Next on the list is Eliot. They’re also open, but with no indexes in Apache. I can run an empty search and it returns all of the images in the database in a single page. Then I can save the page and Mozilla will save all the images for me. Excellent. Moving right along …
He was now deep in hacker’s paradise. Breaking into Harvard’s computer system really was child’s play to him. He was smarter than anyone Harvard had employed to make the system, he was smarter than the administration, and he was certainly smarter than the security systems Harvard had put into place. Really, he was teaching them a lesson—showing them the flaws in their system. He was doing a good deed, though it was pretty likely that they wouldn’t have seen it that way. But hey, Mark was documenting what he was doing right there in his blog. And when he built the Web site, he was going to put that blog right there on the site, for everyone to see. Maybe crazy, a little, but that was going to be the icing on the cake.
1:06 am: Lowell has some security. They require a username/password combo to access the facebook. I’m going to go ahead and say that they don’t have access to the main fas user database, so they have no way of knowing what people’s passwords are, and the house isn’t exactly going to ask students for their fas passwords, so it’s got to be something else. Maybe there’s a single username/password combo that all of Lowell knows. That seems a little hard to manage since it would be impossible for the webmaster to tell Lowell residents how to figure out the username and password without giving them away completely. And you do want people to know what kind of authentication is necessary, so it’s probably not that either. So what does each student have that can be used for authentication that the house webmaster has access to? Student ID’s anyone? Suspicions affirmed—time to get myself a matching name and student ID combo for Lowell and I’m in. But there are more problems. The pictures are separated into a bunch of different pages, and I’m way too lazy to go through all of them and save each one. Writing a perl script to take care of that seems like the right answer. Indeed.
